Kindergarten & First Grade!

Kindergarten & First Grade Newsletter

Saturday, March 1, 2026

Welcome back! I hope you were able to spend a little time with your child during their winter break! I was able to rest and read (my favorite “me time” activity). Thank you to everyone for being so flexible with the parent/teacher conference change and, for signing up so quickly. I look forward to seeing you all soon. There are just a couple of families left to find a date/time so I am linking the conference schedule here. I will be away from school from Monday, March 23 - Monday, March 30th. This is the LONGEST that I have ever left my classroom, yikes! However, I know that it will be in good hands. Lucretia (Mrs. G) will be subbing for me and a sub will come in to replace her. This consistency in the kid’s day is really important and I am so grateful that we are able to make this work. While I’m away please contact Danielle in the office if there are any changes with your child, or email Lucretia at lbruceguajardo@u32.org. 

Our Learning in the Classroom:

• Global Citizenship: You may remember this as social studies. We will be addressing the following concepts throughout the next few weeks. Yesterday we used Google Earth (which the kids love) to compare country, town and city maps. We looked at the likes and differences. Next week we look use Google maps to look at various geographical locations and talk about how this may affect the way people live/work/survive in each environment.

1. Use maps, globes, and other simple geographic models to identify cultural and environmental characteristics of places.

2. Explain how weather, climate, and other environmental characteristics affect people's lives in a place or region.

• Shared Literacy Learning: In K/1 students are finishing up a unit on opinion writing. All students are expected to be able to write an opinion piece with evidence that helps to sway the reader. Kindergarteners include an opinion with a reason, and first graders must include the same along with a conclusions sentence wrap up their writing piece.

• Kindergarten Literacy: We continue to work on our sight word knowledge: I, a, see, are, to, as, has, his,was, the, and, is. We will be adding she, he, we, me, & be next week. Please be sure to have your child practice reading the small black and white books that they bring home. Remind them to point to each word as they read, use their sight word knowledge, and use the picture ALONG the sounds in the word to read unknown words. In addition: please have your child read their word sort words that come home each week in their Friday Folders. These are spelling patterns that students are learning to read and write!

• Kindergarten Math: We are focused on composing numbers (addition). Last month we worked to find all the number combinations that make 5 & 10. This month we will be focusing on teen numbers as a group of ten and some more. This helps to build place value knowledge for larger numbers.

• First Grade Literacy: We will be focusing on blends this month and words with 4-5 sounds for spelling/writing. In the process of this work we will be revisiting digraphs: sh/ch/th/wh/-ck.  Please have your child read their word sort words that come home each week in their Friday Folders. These are spelling patterns that students are learning to read and write! 

• First Grade Math: Over the past few weeks students have been focused on reading and writing larger numbers to 120, building these quantities using the base ten blocks and orally explaining the place value for each quantity. This week we will be working to compare larger quantities using the math symbols for greater than (>), lees that (<) and equal too (=).

• Read Aloud: We have started a new book The BFG by Roald Dahl. We have talked at length about fiction verses non-fiction. This book contains “man eating” giants, but we are focusing on the make believe, humor, kindness and fantastical world that is imagined in this book. Ask your child about it.

Important Reminders and Upcoming Events:

• Time Change: Ugh, this, as we know, is always a challenge. Tomorrow we will lose an hour, but “gain” daylight on the end of our day. Please click on the school newsletter below to find some helpful information on how to help your child with the transition.

• No School: Parent/Teacher conference day is Friday, March 20th, no school for students.

• New Photos: I have not been keeping up with my photo download this year! So over vacation I uploaded over 100 new photos to the site, enjoy!

School Newsletter: Here is a link to all the other great stuff happening.